Being Human (1994)

Being Human is one of those rare, idiosyncratic films that feels like a handful of folktales carried on the same breath—ambitious, tender, and quietly daring in the way it asks big questions without turning preachy. Bill Forsyth hops across centuries with a storyteller’s ease, letting each era bring its own flavor of comedy, melancholy, and wonder, while Robin Williams grounds the whole journey with a performance that’s more searching than showy. The movie’s pleasures are often in the vivid details—lush scenery, unexpected turns of feeling, and the sense that every lifetime is another angle on the same human flaw we recognize in ourselves. It doesn’t always “mesh” in a tidy, conventional way, so if you need a perfectly locked plot machine you may resist it—but if you’re open to a profound delight that plays like a dream you can argue with afterward, it’s absolutely worth the trip.

Being Human is clearly aiming for a sweeping, life-spanning fable about courage and responsibility, using Robin Williams to connect a series of reincarnated vignettes across centuries. The problem is that it often plays more like a set of stylish, half-finished short films than one satisfying story, so the emotional through-line can feel thin and the big philosophical points land with a thud. If you need clear momentum, character development you can track, or a payoff that justifies the symbolism, this may come off as confusing and oddly inert. Still, Bill Forsyth gives it a gentle, atmospheric look and Williams has moments of warmth, so it can work as a mood piece for patient viewers who enjoy ideas more than plot.